The invention pertains to digital media and, more particularly, by way of non-limiting example, to the management of music, e-books and other forms of digital media. The invention has application, by way of non-limiting example, in identifying, sharing, transferring, redistributing and removing previously owned digital media.
Digital computer music is very popular but so is the practice of making and distributing copyright-infringing copies. The music industry has tried many ways to prevent unauthorized copying and distributing digital music. The problem is not limited to digital music, however, digital movies, e-books, and many other digital media objects are also subject to such copying.
Some methods of playing digital music and videos, such as DVD players and Microsoft's Windows Media Player, will only play objects that can be verified as original and legal. Other devices go even further and remove content deemed illegal. For example, the producers of special purpose devices for playing music, running software games, and displaying e-books have retained the right to remove content even after it is purchased and installed on a user's device. For example, digital media objects purchased through Apple's “app” store can be remotely removed from an iPhone or iTouch without the owner's knowledge. Similarly for Amazon's Kindle e-book reader. This can be done in a vertical market in which the producer of the device is also the sole content distributor.
In a non-vertical market, when there is a personal computer in the chain of producer to consumer, it is often challenging to determine if a file contains a particular digital media object. Small changes to the file undetectable by the viewer or listener make it hard to determine the exact contents of a file.
Other technology, however, can identify the contents of a digital media object. For example, in the case of digital music, there are several ways to perform acoustic fingerprinting or content-based audio identification, e.g. see U.S. Pat. No. 7,277,766 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,918,223. These and other methods identify content from excerpts of only a few seconds long and deal with shifting (not knowing exactly where in the content is the excerpt). Some can also handle other sources of degradation such as pitching (playing it faster or slower), equalization, and background noise. They are relatively computationally efficient.
There are two fundamental processes for identifying the content of a digital media object (not just audio): fingerprint extraction and matching algorithm. The first processes the contents of a digital media object producing a set of features that are particular to the specific object. The second uses these to identify the object by querying a database of known objects and their features.
Note that the second process is not need when the digital media object is known. For example, consider the case when one wants to find all files that the Beatle's song “Yesterday.” Given a fingerprint of “Yesterday” one just compares this with the fingerprints of all files.
Fingerprinting should not be confused with digital watermarking which relies on inserting identifying features into the content itself, and therefore changing the nature of the content. Watermarks must be inserted at the source in order to identify content and may be changed or removed at a later time by anyone.
Like audio, video fingerprinting is also a well-known technology. For audio and video, there are many fingerprinting services, such as:
Advestigo(audio, video and image fingerprinting)Attributor(image and video fingerprinting)Auditude Connect technology(audio and video fingerprinting)Audible Magic(audio video image fingerprinting)AudioFingerprintat MusicBrainz's wikiINA(video fingerprinting)iPharro Media(video fingerprinting)Philips Content Identification(audio and video fingerprinting)MetatOGGerfreeware using the MusicDNS service foridentifying audio filesNew Media Labbroadcast monitoring service using audiofingerprinting technology.Civolution(audio and video fingerprinting)Thomson(video fingerprinting)Vercury(audio, image and video fingerprinting)Vidyatel Video conform, TV(frame accurate video fingerprinting)tracking and ManagementVobile Content Identification(audio and video fingerprinting)and ManagementYUVsoft(video fingerprinting and search)Zeitera(video fingerprinting)
Electronic books can be read on a computer, laptop, smart phone, PDA, or specialized e-book reader. Many e-book readers use e-ink as a display device because they require less power, and are easy to read in bright sun light, and are less expensive. E-ink currently cannot render animations with sufficient speed to look seamless. Consequently, e-book readers tend to be of limited computational value, and are usually dedicated to the single function of displaying the pages of an electronic book. The Illiad IRex, Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, and the Barns-n-Noble Nook are some dedicated e-book readers.
To date, the publishers have a tighter control on the distribution of e-books. There are some digitizing and scanning services, such as the Gutenberg Project and Google's book scanning effort, that place digital versions of many books in the public domain. It is much easier to fingerprint books, since the words have a much more standard format.
Depending on the type of ebook software, the ebook file is either encrypted to a specific computer or device (meaning it can only be read on that computer or device) or it is encrypted to a specific user's account (meaning it can be read on any device or computer which contains that user's secret account information).
If an ebook has been protected for only one person to read, then consumers (or “users”) download the file to their computer and must read the ebook on that computer (or on other devices containing their secret account information). Copies of the ebook can only be read on authorized computers or by authorized users.
If a publisher/author has decided not to copy-protect their ebook, then consumers (or “users”) download the file to their computer and can then copy it to any other computer/device they choose. The ebook may be read on any supported computer and by any user.
Other digital media objects work in a similar fashion.
In view of the foregoing, an object of the invention is to provide improved systems and methods for digital data processing and, more particularly, for the management of music, e-books and other forms of digital media.